A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture

by Clara Erskine Clement Waters

A third sculptor of this time was Calamis, who was in his prime about B.C. 450. He was not born in Athens, but he worked there. Calamis added to the exact representations of Pythagoras and Myron the element of grace beyond their powers in that direction. He made a greater variety of figures than they, for to gods and heroes he added heroines, boys and horses. His works were in bronze, gold and ivory, as well as marble. But what we know of Calamis is gathered from the writings of Greek authors rather than from works, or copies of works, by him still existing; indeed, no statue remains known to be his own, though there are some which critics fancy may be so. But we may be certain of his great excellence from the many praises sung and said of him, and Lucian, who knew all the best works of all the greatest masters of Greece, puts Calamis before them all for elegance and grace, and for the finer expression of faces; when imagining a beautiful statue of a young girl he declares that he would go to Calamis to impart to it a chaste modesty and give it a sweet and unaffected smile.

Phidias is the most famous of all Greek sculptors, and as Greek sculpture is the finest sculpture of which we have any knowledge, it follows that Phidias was the first sculptor of the world. And yet, in spite of his fame, we do not know the time of his birth. We know that he was the son of Charmidas, but we know nothing of the father except that he had a brother who was a painter, and this makes it probable that the family of Phidias were artists.

As nearly as can be told, Phidias was born about B.C. 500. This would have made him ten years old at the time of the battle of Marathon and twenty years old when Salamis was fought, while he came of age at the time of Platæa. He seems to have begun his artistic life as a painter, and we know nothing of him as an independent sculptor until the administration of Cimon, about B.C. 471. But his finest works belong to the time of Pericles, who was his friend as well as patron, and made him the master over all the great public works at Athens during what we speak of as the Periclean age.

It seems that the favor of Pericles was a dear privilege to Phidias, for it exposed him to bitter envy and hatred; and those who feared to attack Pericles himself avenged themselves upon Phidias, and accused him of dishonesty in obtaining the gold for the robe of the statue of Minerva which he made for the Parthenon. He proved himself innocent of this, but he was accused of other crimes, and one account says that he was thrown into prison and died there of disease or poison. Another account relates that the great sculptor went into exile at Elis, where he made his most famous statue, the Olympian Zeus, and that he was there convicted of theft and put to death. With such contradictory stories we cannot know the exact truth; but we do know that he went to Elis accompanied by distinguished artists. He was received with honor, and for a long time the studio that he occupied there was shown to strangers. The Olympians also allowed him an honor which the Athenians never extended to him—that is, to inscribe his name upon the base of the statue of Zeus, which he was not permitted to do in the case of the Minerva (or Athena) of the Parthenon.

It often happens in the case of a very great man that the events which have preceded his manhood have prepared the way for him and his work in so striking a manner that it seems as if he could not have been great at any other time, and that he could not avoid being so, when everything had been shaped to his advantage. This was true of Phidias. When he came to be a man the dreadful wars which had ravaged Greece were over, and the destruction of the older structures prepared the way for the rebuilding of Athens. Large quantities of "marble, bronze, ivory, gold, ebony and cypress wood" were there, and a great number of skilful workmen were at hand to work under his command. The Athenians were ablaze with zeal to rebuild the temples and shrines of their gods, who, as they believed, had led them to their victories, and not only the public, but the private means were used to make Athens the grandest and most beautiful city of the world.

The first great work with which the name of Phidias was connected was the building of the temple of Theseus, called also the Theseion. This was a very important temple, and was constructed in obedience to the command of an oracle in this wise: In B.C. 470 the island of Scyros had been taken by the Athenians, and upon this island Theseus had been buried. After the battle of Marathon, in which he had aided the Athenians, Theseus was much regarded by them, and in B.C. 476 they were directed to remove his bones to Athens and build over them a shrine worthy of so great a champion. Just then a gigantic skeleton was discovered at Scyros by Cimon, and was brought to Athens with great ceremony, and laid to rest with pompous respect, and the splendid temple dedicated to Theseus was begun, and Phidias was commissioned to make its plastic ornaments. The precincts of this temple later became a sanctuary where the poor man and the slave could be safe from the oppressor.

Fig. 23.—Athenian Coins with the Minerva Promachos.

Phidias executed many works under the patronage of Cimon, the greatest of which was the colossal statue of Minerva, which stood on the Acropolis. It was called the "Minerva Promachos," and was so gigantic that "the crest of her helmet and the point of her spear could be seen by the mariner off the promontory of Sunium glittering in the sunlight as a welcome to her own chosen people, and an awful warning to her foes." The meaning of Promachos may be given as champion or guardian, and we know from existing descriptions that, with its pedestal, it must have been at least seventy feet in height. It was made from the spoils taken at Marathon; its pedestal was found, in 1840, standing between the Parthenon and the Erechtheium. It has been called the "Pallas with the golden spear," for this goddess was known as Athena, Minerva, and Pallas, and it is said that Alaric was so impressed by its awful aspect that he shrank from it in horror. The only representations of this statue now in existence are upon Athenian coins, and the position of the goddess differs in these, as you will see by the illustration (Fig. 23); there are reasons for believing that the one in which the shield rests upon the ground is correct, one of which is that some years after the death of Phidias the inside of the shield was ornamented by a relief of the battle of the Centaurs.

Though Phidias proved himself to be a great artist during the reign of Cimon, it was not until the time of Pericles that he reached the glorious height of his genius. Pericles and Phidias seem to have been two grand forces working in harmony for the political and artistic grandeur of Athens, and, indeed, of all Attica, for within a period of twenty years nearly all the great works of that country were begun and completed. Plutarch writes of these wonders in these words: "Hence we have the more reason to wonder that the structures raised by Pericles should be built in so short a time, and yet built for ages. For as each of them, as soon as it was finished, had the venerable air of antiquity, so now that they are old they have the freshness of a modern building. A bloom is diffused over them which preserves their aspect untarnished by time, as if they were animated with a spirit of perpetual youth and unfading elegance."